


Then Comes the Chilly Breath...

by randi2204



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Crossover, Gen, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 16:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12586376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: It took a while, but eventually JD noticed that sometimes, particularly when he was walking by a cemetery along about dusk, the back of his neck would tingle.





	Then Comes the Chilly Breath...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [farad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, no money. The characters and concepts here belong variously to MGM, Mirisch,  & Trilogy, or Joss.

It took a while, but eventually JD noticed that sometimes, particularly when he was walking by a cemetery along about dusk, the back of his neck would tingle.

 

At first, he thought it was just him being nervous, and, well, walking by any cemetery with freshly dug graves would make anyone think twice about life and death.  But it kept on happening.  There was a lot more disturbed earth in the graveyards than seemed appropriate for the death notices in the newspaper, too.

 

 _Could it be grave robbers?_ he wondered, hurrying past the graveyard. _Why would anyone want to_ do _that?_

 

His mother fell ill very suddenly; one day she was fine and the next she couldn’t even rise from her bed.  When the doctor came, he had no idea what was wrong with her.  He bled her, and it only left her paler, more drawn, more lethargic.

 

JD had never known her to get sick before, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was scared.  She developed a fever and a cough, just like the one the cook had, and the next day, she was gone and he was alone.

 

Mister Thompson wouldn’t let his mother be buried in the graveyard on the property.  JD knew where his mother kept her savings, the money she’d told him to use for college when he was old enough to go, so he used that money to pay for her to be buried.  What little money he made as a stable hand, he put aside too, but he knew that there would never be enough for him to go to college. 

 

After the funeral service, he went through her things, including the heavy old trunk at the foot of her bed, the one she always kept locked.  He found the key hidden in the small case in which she kept her jewelry.

 

 _“I know you’re a curious boy, Johnny,” Ma said, her plump face looking stern, an expression it wasn’t built for at all. “But that trunk isn’t for_ you.  _Don’t open it.”_

 

The trunk had a number of dusty old books, huge books, bigger than the ones in Mister Thompson’s library.  They were all bound in leather, soft and worn with age, the covers peeling away at the corners if they weren’t protected.  There were also several large crosses, some empty bottles, and a number of wood pieces that had been sharpened at one end.  _What on earth is all this?_ he asked himself, turning one of the wooden bits over in his hands.

 

Maybe the books would have some explanation.  The first one he picked up had _Vampyr_ picked out in ink across the cover.

 

JD opened it, expecting it to be a story, like that book he’d found in the library, _Varney the Vampire_ – something fanciful and tinged with horror and death.

 

But it wasn’t like that at all; it _detailed_ everything about vampires – from their strengths and weaknesses to their feeding habits – as if they were _real_.  It was all handwritten, and in several different hands.  The first hundred pages or more were in some language other than English, or maybe even two; the handwriting changed often enough that it was hard to tell.

 

Even worse, there were _pictures_ of things that purported to be vampires, drawn right in the book; heads that looked vaguely like men or women, but they all had sharp teeth protruding from beneath their lips, and lumps or ridges or _something_ on their brows and all the way down to the nose.  Drawings of hands depicted long, ragged fingernails like they were claws.

 

For a while, JD forgot his grief and just sat there reading, his back against the bed in which his mother had died.  The only sound was the soft crinkle of ancient paper as he turned the pages.  When he got to the end, it was just… _natural_ to pick up the next one.

 

The second book he picked up was smaller but thicker; the pages inside were of several different sizes, like a couple of different books been rebound into this volume.  The paper was old, the ink faded, so he turned toward the pages that looked newer.  They’d been printed on a press, but the letters looked strange, and whoever had set it didn’t know how to spell worth beans.

 

He bridged through the pages with his thumb and was about to set it aside with the others when he noticed that the last page was actually in printed in readable English.  So he flipped back through the book until he came to what seemed to be the beginning of this section, and a chill went down his spine.

 

 _A history of the Slayer_ , it said, _being a translation from the original Latin._

 

 _A_ slayer? JD thought, biting his lip.  _Why would they write about someone who_ kills people?  _Who would ever be interested in_ that?

 

But it wasn’t about a murderer at all, he discovered; it was about a girl who was chosen (by what means wasn’t clear; at least, whoever was doing the writing didn’t want to say) to be the Vampire Slayer.  This girl, whoever she was, had special strength and speed and stamina, and she used that to keep the world safe from vampires until she died.

 

 _Died?_ JD paused to consider that.  _If she’s so special, why does she gotta die?_

 

The book didn’t seem to want to answer that question, either.  It did, however, present a list of supposedly all the girls chosen to be Slayers (and they always capitalized it, too), with the dates they were Called and the dates they died.  Some of them were only Slayers for a few days; some survived for a few years, but not much longer. 

 

He read until it grew too dark to see, and he had to fumble for the lantern.  Just for a moment, he took comfort in the soft glow, and in the fact that he was inside so no vampires could get to him.

 

 _Except vampires aren’t really real, no matter what these books say,_ he told himself.

 

The problem was that he was no longer as sure about that as he would have liked.

 

When his head kept drooping of its own accord and he couldn’t keep his eyes open, he crawled into his mother’s bed to sleep… except then he couldn’t.  Every creak of the house settling, every noise outside – he heard every sound, and each one sent a jolt of trepidation through him, keeping sleep away.  Was it a vampire or just a branch scratching against the window?

 

“Johnny? Wake up, boy!”

 

At the sharp order, JD sat bolt upright and tried to jump out of bed, but the covers were wound around him, evidence of his tossing and turning, and he fell to the floor instead.  “Ow,” he moaned.

 

“Goodness!  Are you all right?”

 

He recognized the voice as Missus Allen, the cook, who had recovered from the illness that took his mother.  “Yes, Missus Allen,” he replied, his throat closing, because he couldn’t help but wish…

 

 _Stop that,_ he told himself, blinking back tears.  _Ma would have your hide for wishin’ someone else was dead in her place._

 

Despite being half-asleep all day, he picked up one of the books from the old trunk again that night.  This one was at times both boring and terribly exciting, as it detailed the life of one of the Slayers.  It was written by someone called Watcher.  _Or,_ JD thought, staring down at the writing covering the page, _maybe that’s his title?_ He sighed, but kept reading.  _Why can’t they be_ clearer?

 

There were several such volumes in his mother’s trunk, JD discovered.  Many of the Watchers (yes, it _was_ a title, but he only discovered that from the second volume) wrote about the difficulty they had in treating the Slayer as their Council demanded – _as a disposable commodity_ , one of them wrote.

 

The Watcher’s journal of the Slayer’s life cut off abruptly midway through the book, because her life was cut off abruptly by a vampire – or perhaps even more than one, given that the Watcher had lagged behind his Slayer that evening and only came upon her body after she’d been killed.  The Watcher’s grief at his charge’s death came through in his words.  JD felt himself choking up as he read the Watcher’s entry, and couldn’t bring himself to pick up the next volume.

 

The next day, he kept thinking about these Slayers and Watchers, thoughts popping up at any moment to distract him.  _Why is it always girls?_ he wondered.  _Every Slayer has been a girl since the first one, according to the books, but why?  None of the books say_ why _it’s always a girl._   He paused in mending the cheek strap of the bridle across his lap.  _Wouldn’t a boy – a man – be stronger to begin with? Even on top of… whatever mystical gifts the Slayer gets?_ But he had no answer to that question, nor could he find it in the History of the Slayer.

 

It wasn’t until a week later, when he’d finished all the books in his mother’s trunk, that JD could at last admit that not only were vampires real – there seemed to be no denying that now – but he wished that he was one of those girls, that he was _special_ like she was.

 

 _Was Ma one of those girls?_ he wondered.  _If she was, did she pass along that… that_ Chosen _thing to me?_   In all the books, there was no clue as to why his mother had them, if she was a Slayer or a Watcher or if it was just something passed down from her parents.  There were no Dunnes mentioned in any of the books, and no names he recognized from stories his mother told of her family.  He chafed at not being able to figure out the mystery.

 

His heart beat faster when he accidentally snapped off the latch on the stable door, because _maybe…_ maybe it would be _him_ , not some girl.  But when he looked at the door, he saw the wood had rotted around the latch.  If it hadn’t been him who’d broken it, it would have been whoever next opened the door.

 

He wasn’t the Slayer.  _Stop thinkin’ you will be,_ he told himself firmly, as he found a piece of wood to prop the stable door closed.  _The book says it’s for girls, and you ain’t a girl._

 

Besides, none of those girls in the list ever lived to be half as old as his mother, and none of the books had her handwriting, so she wasn’t a Slayer or a Watcher, and that meant he wasn’t, either.

 

 _Still,_ he thought, a bit wistfully, _it would have been interesting._

 

But that tingle at the back of his neck wouldn’t let up whenever he passed a fresh grave, particularly about dusk, and now he hurried by so he could be inside and safe before any vampires rose for the night.

 

One morning, he happened to catch sight of Mister Thompson’s newspaper, and the headline screamed _Massacre in Cambridge – Two Dead, One Missing!_   As he read the attached article, the idea crept into his head that it might – _might_ – be the work of a vampire.  Perhaps even one who had made the missing person into a vampire as well; he’d read that in one of the books, too, how vampires made other vampires – _sired_ them, that was what it said.  Drank all the blood from a person, then gave them some their own blood, and left them to be buried.  A day or two afterwards, they clawed their way out of the grave and began the cycle over again.

 

His insides shrank as he read the article about the gruesome spectacle – apparently a lot of blood had been splashed around and walked through.  The house where it had taken place had been locked up by the police.  _So that’s that,_ he thought, slowly folding the newspaper and putting back on the table.  _Nothing anyone can do about it now._

 

He was mucking out stalls when he remembered the pointed bits of wood – _stakes_ – in his mother’s trunk.

 

That evening, JD took all the stakes from the trunk and tried to figure out the best way to carry them.  _I’ll never get them out of a sack in time,_ he thought, tapping his finger against the sharp end of one stake.  _But I can’t just carry them all in my arms, either, not without looking… conspicuous…_

 

In the end, he tucked a couple into his belt where his coat would cover them, and slipped another up his sleeve.  Then, well after the sun had set, he slipped from the house, his mother’s crucifix around his neck.  _At least I’ll have_ some _protection,_ he thought.  _Wish I’d been able to get some holy water… Well, I guess I can do that Sunday._   He swallowed.  _If I make it through tonight…_

 

There were no police at the house where the massacre had taken place.  No lights shone in the windows either, and there was an air of _death_ around it.  Carefully, JD made his way around the house to the barn.  The horses had been taken away, but he found a lantern inside, and a shovel that still had a bit of mud clinging to it.

 

Once he had the lantern lit, he explored the back garden, looking for recently turned earth.  Finding a patch that looked fresh made his heart start to pound harder in his chest.  He eased the stake from his sleeve, set the lantern down and stood, waiting, for what seemed like an hour.

 

When at last a hand thrust up through the dirt, he had to cover his mouth to contain his shriek; the waiting had worn on him until he was as nervous and twitchy as Mister Thompson’s favorite racehorse.

 

A second hand worked its way out of the dirt, groping for something to grab onto for leverage, and then the vampire rose, sitting up in its grave and shedding earth almost as if it were water.  JD shook himself from his horror – the vampire’s eyes glowed yellow in the lantern-light, and dirt made the shadows from its brow-ridges even darker.  Its mouth stretched in a rictus grin, displaying a mouthful of teeth with needle points and longer fangs where its eyeteeth would have been.

 

“Well, well,” it chuckled, reaching out toward JD, “a meal, ready and waiting!”

 

JD wanted to scuttle backwards, to just get away from this horror because this was worse than everything he’d read in the books; this was _real_.  This wasn’t a drawing, this thing in front of him.  It wasn’t even a person anymore – it was a demon taking up residence in a dead body, something evil and unclean.

 

He slipped the stake from his sleeve and got it reversed just in time; the vampire lunged at him, and impaled itself on the pointed end.  It stared down at the stake in disbelief for a mere second before crumbling into dust.

 

JD collapsed as well, panting and clutching his chest.  He stared at the place where the vampire had been, the disturbed ground just visible in the lantern light, and thought, just for a moment, how close his death had come.

 

 _This is dangerous,_ he thought, and forced himself to his feet.  He stumbled back to the barn and quenched the lantern, then continued home.  Once his heart had calmed, the whole experience seemed… anti-climactic somehow.  He had not had to fight the vampire, the way the books described the Slayer’s battles.  _But if I had,_ he thought, hurrying his steps until he was nearly running, _it probably would have killed me, because I don’t have the Slayer’s special strength or anything…_

 

That was disheartening, but he had at least had time to get used to the fact that the Slayer was something he never could be.

 

At the same time, killing the vampire had been… terribly exciting, in a way that nothing in his life had ever truly been before.  _I want to do it again,_ he realized.  _But how? This situation was probably once in a lifetime._

 

That thought, and the sudden letdown of feeling, lingered all the way back to Mister Thompson’s house, which seemed to be much farther than he remembered.

 

After creeping back to his room, JD found it difficult to get to sleep; the problem of Vampires and How to Kill Them kept him awake for a long time.  He stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows thrown by the moonlight creep across it. The sight made him shiver, but he comforted himself with the thought that at least he was safe inside.

 

He spent the next day half-hoping someone would say something about vampires.  But of course no one did; they had no idea that vampires even existed.  _No one will ever know_ , he thought as he fed Mister Thompson’s horses. _Not unless I actually manage to save them from a vampire… and that’s gonna be a problem…_

 

What he needed, he decided at last, was a crossbow – something that fired a sharp wooden object hard enough that it could reach a vampire’s heart and turn it to dust.  _Too bad there wasn’t one in Ma’s trunk,_ he thought, idly flipping through the _Vampyr_ book.  _Because I don’t think I could make one, and I couldn’t afford to_ buy _one, even if there was a place I could_.  He sighed.  _I know I could get a gun for less – heck, I could probably get_ two _guns for less._

 

His fingers stilled on the book’s ragged pages.  _A gun_ , he thought slowly.  _It’d be cheaper, that’s for sure… maybe it could shoot_ wooden _bullets?_   That would solve his problems – he wouldn’t have to worry about getting too close, or about not having the kind of strength necessary to force a stake into a vampire’s heart.

 

 _I’ll have to make the bullets_ , he thought, frowning. But if it worked… He could do something about this evil that he’d only just found out about.  Carefully, he shut the book and tucked it back in the trunk.

 

At least he knew what that tingle on the back of his neck was telling him now.

 

***

October 31, 2017

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the [mag7daybook](http://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/) prompt [Any, any, the tingle at the back of his neck.....](https://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/483962.html?thread=4451706#cmt4451706). The prompt was given with the intent it be a crossover. This is what my muse decided to crossover with.
> 
> The title is a quote from John D. MacDonald's work Her Dress in Indigo: "Any man who outgrows the myths of childhood is ninety-nine percent aware and convinced of his own mortality. But then comes the chilly breath on the nape of the neck, a stirring of the air by the wings of the bleak angel. When a man becomes one hundred percent certain of his inevitable death, he gets The Look."


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